ABU(i)
1 JAMES, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.
2 Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into various temptations;
3 knowing that the proving of your faith works patience.
4 But let patience have a perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.
5 But if any one of you is lacking in wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally, and upbraids not, and it will be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering; for he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man suppose that he shall receive anything from the Lord;
8 a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9 Let the brother of low degree glory in that he is exalted;
10 but the rich, in that he is made low; because as the flower of the grass he will pass away.
11 For the sun rose with the burning heat, and withered the grass, and its flower fell off, and the grace of its fashion perished; so also will the rich man fade away in his ways.
12 Happy is the man that endures temptation; because, when he is approved, he will receive the crown of life, which He promised to those who love him.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God; for God can not be tempted with evil, and himself tempts no one.
14 But each one is tempted, when by his own lust he is drawn away and enticed.
15 Then lust, having conceived, brings forth sin; and sin, when completed, brings forth death.
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the lights, with whom there is no variableness, or shadow of turning.
18 Of his own will he begot us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures.
19 So that, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath;
20 for the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God.
21 Wherefore, putting off all filthiness and excess of wickedness, receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
23 For if any one is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like to a man beholding his natural face in a mirror.
24 For he beheld himself, and has gone away; and immediately he forgot what manner of man he was.
25 But he who looked into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and remained thereby, being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of work, this man shall be happy in his doing.
26 If any one thinks that he is religious, and bridles not his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
27 Religion, pure and undefiled before God and the Father, is this: To visit the orphans and widows in their affliction; to keep himself unspotted from the world.